Aviation aircraft operate in a dynamic environment requiring pro-active control to ensure that IP data connectivity to the flight can be achieved, maintained and that safety and security is not compromised by unwanted data interception.
This becomes challenging and problematic when the underlying network providing the IP data connectivity is also in a dynamic environment (i.e. other aviation aircraft) and control needs to be shared across interconnected aircraft and ground based controllers.
US2004/253949, assigned to Boeing, discloses a wireless communications system and method provides wireless communications service for user equipment on board an aircraft. The aircraft includes on-board system equipment for supporting the wireless communications service with on-board user equipment. One or more ground stations are used for communicating with the aircraft using a plurality of feeder links for exchanging the wireless communications service's traffic and control information with the on-board system equipment, and for providing interfaces with a terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure. A mobile switching center manages the ground stations and the on-board system equipment of the aircraft, wherein the mobile switching center includes at least one platform visitor location register (VLR) associated with each aircraft to ensure proper registration and tracking of the user equipment used on board the aircraft. The Boeing patent publication focusses on a visitor location register that can be associated with an aircraft for the purposes of providing data services via a ground-to-air communications link. However a problem with this approach is that it does not envisage aircraft-to-aircraft communications and the system does not dynamically maintain IP coverage.
US2013/177321, assigned to Google Inc., discloses an exemplary network system may include: (a) a plurality of super-node balloons, where each super-node balloon comprises a free-space optical communication system for data communications with one or more other super-node balloons and (b) a plurality of sub-node balloons, where each of the sub-node balloons comprises a radio-frequency communication system that is operable for data communications.; Further, at least one super-node balloon may further include an RF communication system that is operable to transmit data to at least one sub-node balloon, where the RF communication system of the at least one sub-node balloon is further operable to receive the data transmitted by the at least one super-node balloon and to transmit the received data to at least one ground-based station. Again a problem with this approach is that it does also envisage aircraft-to-aircraft communications and the system does not dynamically maintain IP coverage for moving aircraft. In addition the Google system does not address the situation where there is one or more non-cooperative independent aircraft which are owned by entities other than the telecommunication system operator require reliable data links.
It is therefore an object to provide an improved system and method for managing data connectivity links for aviation vehicles.